Kadaga to summon KCCA over property tax rates

KAMPALA – Speaker Rebecca Kadaga has promised to engage the leadership of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) to halt the implementation of the Property Tax Rate in Kawempe Division until the process of determining the tax is reviewed.

Kadaga’s remarks were in response to a petition by Kawempe residents led by Deputy Mayor, Ismail Ntale who petitioned Parliament demanding the review of the process of rating the property tax saying that the authority based the rates on assumption.

“I am going to discuss it with Andrew Kitaka, Acting Executive Director KCCA and also inform the Ministers because the anomalies and they need to be corrected and very quickly. They should understand that the exercise wasn’t valid because of the way it was done therefore they can’t enforce it because people are disputing it,” said the Speaker.

Latif Ssebaggala (Kawempe North) asked Speaker to look into the matter saying the contentious tax hasn’t been used as stipulated by the law and called for its scrapping.

Responding to the matter, Kadaga noted that the Authority can’t start collecting the tax which is disputed by the residents.

The property tax rate is an annual levy on any commercial property (building) that exists within the jurisdiction of the city with the money meant to go towards the development of infrastructure within Kampala.

The Local Government (Rating) Act 2005 gives local governments leeway to charge from 1-12 per cent of the money made annually on commercial properties in the city with the appropriate percentage set by elected leaders depending on the income and the commercial properties earn in revenue.

KCCA charges 6% property tax while Kira, Nansana and Mukono municipalities charge a higher percentage with Kampala set to start implementing the levy at the start of the financial year on 1st July 2019.